


light the candle from both ends

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alvaro looks at his phone for two seconds then puts it down on the coffee table, screen down.</p>
<p>He's not worried. Isco hasn't called or texted for 3 weeks, but he’s busy. They’re both busy. Not too busy to update Instagram, but- probably busy. Training.</p>
            </blockquote>





	light the candle from both ends

**Author's Note:**

> thanks a bajillion to the love of my life for the beta <3 <3 <3 [saltstreets](http://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets)

Alvaro looks at his phone for two seconds then puts it down on the coffee table, screen down.

He's not worried. Isco hasn't called or texted for 3 weeks, but he’s busy. They’re both busy. Not too busy to update Instagram, but- probably busy. Training.

  
  


“Hey! Morata! You look off.” Paulo yells at him in training, hands on hips. Alvaro tells himself it's just the set of his face, because Paulo has this intense angry look about him sometimes that makes it seem as though he's concentrating very hard. It’s a little unnerving. Alvaro cuffs his neck and pulls him in, ignoring the halfhearted giggling protests Paulo puts up, and they set off to the changing rooms together.

“Fuck you. I was fine in training.” Alvaro says, absently, his arm slung around Paulo's shoulders in easy companionship.

“You look like you had something on your mind.” Paulo says, twisting his head to look at him. The focused look is back on his face.

“You should smile more.” Alvaro informs him, poking his cheek with a finger. Paulo's frown deepens. Alvaro fights back a chuckle. “You'll get frown lines between your eyebrows, and then all the girls will flock to me.”

Paulo rolls his eyes so hard Alvaro fears for their safety. “No, they'll flock to Pogba.”

Alvaro tips his head, considers. “You're right. When Paul's not around then. Just between you and me.”

“Just you and me?” Paulo says, slow smirk on his mouth. He jabs Alvaro in the side and Alvaro groans, widens his eyes at Paulo in mock betrayal.

Paulo raises his arms at the sky like he's scored a home goal and walks off, leaving Alvaro winded behind him, smiling a little, feeling peculiar.  

  
  


-

 

“Yes-” Isco's voice breaks off and he laughs at something that Alvaro couldn't make out. “Yes, hang on. I'm talking to- Alvaro. Yes.”

“Who’s that?” Alvaro asks, making his voice as light as possible.

“James.”

“Rodriguez?”

“Yes, he's here for dinner,” Isco says. “What did you want to talk about, Alvaro?”

His voice is that easy going tone he adopts when there’s someone there that he wants to impress. Half joking, slightly cynical. Alvaro feels a sense of disconnect so strong he almost hangs up without saying anything more.

He clears his throat. “Nothing. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I'm doing good. Everything's so busy, you know.”

“Yes,” Alvaro says slowly. “Anyway. Maybe Facetime on Wednesday?”

“Sure. After training? What time are you done? Call me then.”

“Okay,” Alvaro says, and hangs up.  

  
  


-

  
  


Alvaro’s absolutely unsurprised when Isco doesn’t pick up on Wednesday. He was, again, probably busy. If not that, then he was probably too tired to pretend to carry on a normal conversation when the connection dropped every two seconds and all he could see was a frozen pixelated picture of Alvaro’s face. 

  
  


It’s normal. Alvaro puts it out of his mind, or at least he tries to. And in between all the radio silence on Isco’s end, Paulo happens. Paulo happens like something completely unforeseen and totally predictable, makes Alvaro simultaneously want to tear his hair out and pick every star out of the sky just for the kid to smile at him. Alvaro’s aware that he has a type. The first time he’d met Isco, Isco had dropped Alvaro’s phone on a sprinkler and Alvaro had ended up asking him to lunch. 

  
  


The first time he’d met Paulo, he had bluntly offered to introduce Alvaro to Paulo’s favorite hairdresser because he clearly needed all the help he can get. After two seconds of mortified silence, Alvaro had burst out laughing, and Paulo had laughed too, wicked glint in his eyes. Just like that, they were friends. 

  
  


Friends, until Alvaro realises he hasn’t talked to Isco since the national team met up last, and he sees Paulo at a function they’re both attending. 

  
  


-

  
  


“I’m really bored,” Paulo says out of the corner of his mouth, smiling at an important member of whatever company was hosting the event. They’re shut up in the grand ballroom of the Intercontinental, supposed to mingle with important sponsors over canapes and champagne. “Do you want to see a cat video.” 

Alvaro glances at him and snorts. Paulo is leaning casually against a pillar, holding a flute of champagne. 

“Ok,” he says, rubbing his eyes and suppressing a yawn. They’ve just played a match, and it had been a long day. Too long to spend in a stiff suit, making small talk with people he doesn’t know. The cat video is enough to make him feel awake for the ninety seconds it lasted, and then by unspoken agreement they make their way to the bar and get slowly and steadily drunk. 

“We don’t have training tomorrow, right,” Paulo says slowly. He’s picking out bits of pulp from the lime that had been in his drink and licking them off his fingers. Alvaro tries not to stare. 

“No,” he says, then downs the rest of his tequila. 

“Slow down,” Paulo says, looking at him lazily with his head pillowed on his arms. He reaches out and touches Alvaro’s leg, lightly. 

Alvaro looks at him. Paulo raises his eyebrows, elbows propped on the bar table. It’s too calculated to work as seduction, but Alvaro’s falling for it anyway. He’s not really seeing Paulo now, with his hair carefully slicked to one side, suited up in shiny shoes. He’s seeing Paulo’s exuberant grin when he scores with a perfect half volley, just before he jumps into Alvaro’s arms. 

“What-” he starts to ask, and Paulo leans in very close beside his ear. 

“I got a room upstairs,” he says, and stuffs something cold and rectangular in Alvaro’s hand. 

  
  


“Come on up,” Paulo says, smirking as he backed away. Alvaro watches him go, greeting people who recognized him, shaking hands, grinning bashfully, not a hair out of place. He looks down at the keycard in his hand. 

  
  


-

  
  


Paulo’s sitting on the bed when Alvaro walks in hesitantly. He hadn’t knocked. 

“Hey,” Paulo says, putting his phone down. He smiles, and it’s the smile that makes Alvaro close the two steps left between them and kiss him. 

Paulo kisses back, unhurried, a hand on the back of Alvaro’s neck and his other tugging at Alvaro’s belt. He makes encouraging noises when Alvaro pushes him down on the bed, hands sliding under Paulo’s shirt. 

“Come on, Morata,” he breathes, arches up under Alvaro, and Alvaro groans. Paulo laughs, and- 

And it’s so familiar. Alvaro freezes like he’s been stabbed. It’s so familiar because it was almost exactly  the way he’d first fucked Isco. 

  
  


La Decima night, and Isco’s hand tight around his wrist, pulling him into the room. It was whatever afterparty they were at, probably the 5th or the 6th of the night, and they can’t stop touching each other. It raises a few looks they were almost too drunk to catch, but whatever indiscretions they committed that night would almost certainly be lost to the magnitude of what they had achieved. 

And so, an empty hotel room with the rest of their teammates downstairs, Isco’s palm hot against his chest- 

“Here-? What if-” Alvaro gasps, wanting reaffirmation rather than putting up any kind of protest. 

“Shh,” Isco says, bites his ear and grins. “Shut up. No one knows, Morata, come on.” 

  
  


-

  
  


Paulo holds his hands up. “Look, Alvaro. It's no big deal to me. What you choose.” He flops back on the bed, pulls off his tie and drops it on the floor.

Alvaro's mouth feels dry. “I'm sorry.”

Paulo sits up on his elbows, looking bemused. “What? Stop. Alvaro, come here.” He pats the covers next to him. His hair is in disarray, flopping over his forehead in thin spikes. It takes nothing away from the luscious curve of his lips and the tanned flat plane of his stomach where his shirt rides up. Alvaro wants to go over to him so badly it manifests in a hollow ache in his chest and he has to bite his tongue, sharp. He flops down in a chair across from Paulo and rubs a hand over his face.

“Look- Paulo, it's Isco,” he says.

“What? You guys fuck sometimes? It's not a big deal,” Paulo says, lounging around. He points at the fruit bowl on Alvaro's right and Alvaro passes him a bunch of grapes.

“No. There's just- there's more than that. I just- there's more than that,” Alvaro says, running his hands through his hair in frustration.

“Don't do that,” Paulo says, pointing at him with the grapes. “It makes your hair look weird. Like a caveman.”

Alvaro stares at him despairingly. “It is a big deal, Paulo. I can't fuck around on him even though- he's probably- he's probably.” Alvaro can’t finish the fucking sentence, even though he's thought it over in his head so many times that the voice in his brain is saying it very loudly. Paulo raises an eyebrow at him.

Isco's tendency to let his calls go to voicemail at times when he wasn't even in training. The male voice in the background when Alvaro called sometimes, in the evening. Isco wasn't even bothering to be subtle about it, because as Paulo keeps saying, it wasn't a big deal.

“I know it doesn't mean anything,” Alvaro says finally, closing his eyes. “I just wish it did.”

Paulo eats a grape, carefully avoiding eye contact. “He has a girlfriend, Alvaro. He has a baby.”

Alvaro slides out of his armchair and sits on the floor. “I know that.”

Paulo pushes over the bucket of iced champagne.

“Cheer up, bro,” he says.

  
  


-

  
  


Later he’s on the curb outside the hotel, fiddling with his phone. Paulo had called his girlfriend to pick him up, bidding Alvaro goodbye with a handclasp and a slap on the back like he hadn’t been grinding against Alvaro’s thigh less than an hour ago. 

“We’re ok?” Paulo asks, and Alvaro meets his eyes. 

“We’re ok,” Alvaro says, cracks a smile because he can’t help it. Paulo nods, satisfied. He looks at Alvaro for a beat longer and his face softens, inasmuch as he was able with that permanently focused look. 

“I’m here, Alvaro,” he says. 

That more than anything else made Alvaro want to take him home, forget anything and everything else, but- 

“I know,” he says. Paulo shrugs and strolls to his Lamborghini. His girlfriend waves at Alvaro as they pull away and Alvaro waves back. 

He checks his messages again. Isco hasn’t texted. Alvaro dials his agent’s number instead, taking a deep breath when the line connects. 

“Look,” he says, “I need a ticket to Madrid. Yeah, tonight.” 

  
  


-

  
  


No one is flying in first class except a middle aged man in a suit, who falls asleep as soon as they take off. Alvaro sinks down in his seat and shuts his eyes, trying not to think about how terrible of an idea this is. but he doesn’t know what else to do. Except that he needs to see Isco. Everything would become clear when he saw Isco's face.

  
  


Next thing he knows he's being jostled awake by the wheels touching tarmac.

“Are we here?” he stops a stewardess, who smiles at him and nods. Too late to change his mind then.

  
  


In the backseat of a cab with his hood pulled up and his sunglasses on, Alvaro has the self sabotaging urge to go anywhere else. Cibeles, maybe. The Bernabeu. The cab driver frowns at him through the rearview mirror, starting to look suspicious, and Alvaro quietly gives him the address of Isco's house.

  
  


He runs out of courage at the gates, again. His phone is dead but it looks like dawn. It might be lightening up, just barely, but the horizon is hidden. Alvaro considers pressing the buzzer, but he ends up vaulting over the gates, landing on the grass with his leg bent weird underneath him for a moment.

An alarm goes off inside the house. Alvaro tries to ignore the pain in his calf from the awkward landing and contemplates his entire life leading up to this moment. 

  
  


“What the fuck?” Isco's voice sounds incredulous. There's a wavering beam of light on the lawn. “Who's there? I'm calling the police!”

Alvaro groans and staggers out of the bushes, holding his hands up like a caught burglar.

“Alvaro?!”

“Hi Isco,” he says weakly, blinded, and then Isco's sprinklers come on.

  
  


There's something strange about love, Alvaro decides later. Something about the way Isco's face looks in the pale morning light after he switches off his flashlight and hurries down the steps of his house. The way his mouth keeps curving up at the edges although he's biting his lip to try and stop. The way he tugs on Alvaro's wrist and says, “What the fuck, Alvaro- what the  _ fuck- _ ”  hunched in his hoodie, cringing away from the water. Alvaro doesn't say anything. He doesn't really know what to say, so he tugs Isco closer and wraps his arms around him, ignoring Isco's half hearted protests. Isco's laughing then, and Alvaro's soaked and shivering, but Isco's weight in his arms is still familiar-  _ thank god - _ and when Alvaro kisses him, Isco's mouth. Well. Isco's mouth he's never forgotten.

  
  


-

  
  


“Oh, so your plan was to just come and pass out on my lawn?” Isco asks, eyebrows raised. Alvaro shrugs. They're sitting at the kitchen table, Alvaro wearing one of his own shirts he'd left behind at Isco's ages ago.

“I didn't really have a plan.”

Isco whistles, sarcastic. Alvaro stares at him with wounded puppy eyes until Isco relents and reaches across the table to squeeze his hand.

“It's fine,” Isco says. He hesitates, then moves his chair closer so their knees touch.

“Are we alright?” Isco asks.

Alvaro looks at him. His proximity means Alvaro smells him, all the way down through laundry detergent and familiar deodorant to just Isco, heady and so present it makes Alvaro's chest ache a little. It’s all so weird, that they’re here, that Isco has to set off to practice and Alvaro has to fly home in less than two hours.

Isco hasn't let go of his hand yet.

“We're alright,” Alvaro says, and brings Isco's hand up to his mouth, presses a light kiss across his knuckles.

  
Isco's smiling faintly, that fond smile Alvaro thinks sometimes he isn't meant to see, and it’s really alright, just for that moment.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
